Containers for a wide variety of food products comprise a tray housing a food portion and having a lid closure sealed to the tray. Such food products may be distributed frozen or may be dry or, if wet, aseptically processed for distribution at room temperature.
More recently, food products adapted to be microwave heated have become especially popular. Frequently, such containers are constructed having a membrane closure sealed to the tray with a removably detachable perforated lid. The consumer removes the lid and membrane seal, replaces the lid and microwave heats the food product. The replaced lid functions as a splatter guard during the microwave heating step. The perforations allow for steam release during the heating step.
While convenient and practical, such containers are most invariably housed within an outer carton or box and often additionally comprise a shrink wrap film to provide a tamper evident feature and/or to hold the package elements together. The outer carton is typically rectangular and is often adapted to stand on one minor side so as to present a major face outward to the consumer. The outer carton's major face contains graphics and print information designed to attract and appeal to consumers.
While manifestly desirable from a sales standpoint, the outer carton and shrink wrap film elements represent a considerable cost to the overage package system. Moreover, the carton is oftentimes negatively perceived by the consumer as costly and wasteful excess packaging material. Accordingly, it would be desirable to fabricate containers which allow for standing on one minor side to present a major face, e.g., the lid, to the consumer/viewer. Such a construction would allow the graphics to be presented on the lid which comprises the major face. Such a construction would provide the benefit of eliminating the need for the additional external cardboard box housing the container.
While the need for such a container and the advantages to be derived therefrom are clear, the satisfaction of this need is maddeningly complex. The container design necessarily must provide the necessary support. The support must be of sufficient strength to support typical loads occasioned by conventional stacking arrangements. The structure must be easy to open. The structure must comprise elements which themselves are easy to manufacture and to assemble. The package must also stack on its major surfaces during distribution to the food retailer in conventional multiple unit case packing. The package desirably is tamper evident, i.e., the consumer can determine from visual inspection that the container seal integrity has not been compromised. Of course, each package element is desirably low in cost while highly functional.
Surprisingly, the present invention provides a container design which meets each of these requirements and therefore satisfies the need for an improved food container having a stand feature. The present invention resides in part in a specially defined lid flat adapted to be used as a closure for conventional trays which lid includes a novel stand/support feature.
The present invention resides in further improvements to the container disclosed in the parent applications. In the parent applications, the improvements reside in the structure of the stand feature having a flared base which provides an improved stand. In the present invention, further improvements in the stand are disclosed. In one respect, the present improvement resides in the provision of a brace feature. The brace feature does not positioning or indexing of the tray in the stand during industrial production. This proper positioning of the tray helps insure that the panel members are at right angles so that the base panel is more closely exactly horizontal. Such construction provides benefits in forward to back stability.
In another aspect, the present improvements reside in a stand feature of improved appearance, namely, a rectangular base but nonetheless having lateral support panels affixed to the tray vertical sidewalls and having the brace feature.